Jay Newton-Small sends this dispatch:

"What happens when two presidential nominees, all the top congressional leaders and the president sit down in the Oval Office? Crazy security. They've closed Pennsylvania Ave. to pedestrian traffic and we're now being treated to the spectacle of multiple motorcades - motorcycles revving and sirens blaring - arriving at the White House."

In tonight's installment of the Palin/Couric interview, the Governor explains how she's been protecting us from The Bear:

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COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

Wait, Wait ... Wasn't that the plot of "Red Dawn"? Or was that Colorado?

UPDATE: My cousin Dan informs me: Russians invading Alaska figures in many movies and TV shows, including 1982's “World War III” — with David Soul and Brian Keith!

This press release just arrived in my emailbox. (And let the record show, Joel Stein thought of this first.):

Jewsvote.org launches "The Great Schlep" - a national effort to mobilize young Jews to persuade their grandparents to vote for Barack Obama; Actress and Comic Sarah Silverman releases video to promote effort

NEW YORK - The central repository for pro-Obama messaging in the Jewish community launched a new campaign today to mobilize young Jews to go to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama.

The Jewsvote.org campaign, "The Great Schlep," was officially introduced with the release today of an irreverent video from Sarah Silverman promoting the effort with the proclamation: "If Barack Obama doesn't win this election, I am going to blame the Jews, so get your fat Jewish asses on a plane to Florida."

Using cutting-edge political mobilization technology pioneered by Jewsvote.org, volunteers, also known as “schleppers” will have the tools to network and coordinate outreach efforts in the key swing states like Florida. Droga5, a New York-based advertising agency, produced the Silverman video and is well known in the advertising world, especially for their recent Mark Echo – Air Force 1 viral video that was viewed millions of times.

Sarah Silverman's video can be viewed at www.thegreatschlep.com.

I guess the consensus is that McCain is making a not very smart bet with this $700B move. I'll just note that, whatever else it is, his decision to "suspend" his campaign and rush to the sort of rescue is a genuine reflection of McCain's temperament and as good an indicator as any of what kind of president he'd be: impulsive, active, involved, somewhat immune to advice.

The McCain team thinks these traits are a net positive. And they've pretty much placed his candidacy on the line because of that belief. I'm told that the campaign has "made our decision" about the debate, and that the only way McCain will be on that stage is if a resolution is reached. Of course, there's a lot of wiggle room in that statement -- he could leave once an agreement has been reached but nothing passed, for instance -- much as there is a lot of wiggle room in the definition of "suspending" one's campaign. The decision to have Palin hold her first avail ever today of all days is either brilliantly cynical or (in my opinion more likely) a sign of how little coordination there is this completely candidate-led campaign. As one senior aide put it recently: "It wouldn't be a McCain campaign if knew what we were doing."

Sarah Palin took questions from her press pool for the first time today. She was asked five questions, and answered 3.5. When asked if she supports the reelection of Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, two Republicans from Alaska under ethics clouds, she said, "Ted Stevens trial started a couple days ago. We'll see where that goes." When asked if she would vote for them, she did not answer.

This comes hours after a rather awkward interview Palin gave with Katie Couric of CBS News, in which Palin had no answer to two questions. She was asked if it was a conflict of interest for McCain campaign manager Rick Davis to hold an equity stake in a lobbying firm that recently was being paid by Freddie Mac. She dodged the question, repeating an earlier answer. Then she was asked for a specific example of McCain's Wall Street oversight credentials beyond his effort to increase regulation on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Her answer: "I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you." Watch it here:

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Yet another embarrassing episode (see here, here and here) for Denver police: According to the local CBS affiliate, the local police union, the Denver Police Protective Association, is selling a bit of Democratic National Convention memorabilia--a t-shirt that shows a police officer with a baton, and the words "WE GET UP EARLY, to BEAT the crowds."

Hardy Har Har.

This on ABC's "Good Morning America":

"We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates," Clinton said, adding that he was "encouraged" by the joint statement from McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.

"You can put it off a few days the problem is it's hard to reschedule those things," Clinton said, "I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted -- I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that."

If the debate moves forward as planned for Friday night, Clinton says "they should be able to talk about this some of the debate because it is a security issue."

John McCain faced another crisis yesterday--a political one, not the financial emergency he used as an excuse for his rash actions--and once again he overreacted. This is becoming a pattern (as is his "greatest crisis since..." formulation: yesterday, since World War II; previously--on Georgia--since the end of the cold war), and it is not very reassuring behavior in a potential President.

The political crisis was real. And it wasn't merely that he was slipping a bit in the polls. It was that he was being pressured on three sides. The responsible economic leadership of the Republican Party--people like his own economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin and, I assume, the corporate sorts he consults with--were urging him to support a modified version of the bailout package. At the same time, people like Bill Kristol--who can be a surprisingly amoral tactician when it comes to subjects other than foreign policy where he has firm, if mistaken, beliefs--were urging McCain to take a populist nutball Lou Dobbsian stand against the deal. A large number of House Republicans were leaning toward that position, which is why McCain suffered under the--mistaken, I believe--impression that the bailout was in some trouble. A third source of pressure came from those House Republicans who wanted to vote for the package, but didn't want to be hung out to dry by their standard-bearer: they needed to know if McCain was for or against.

It should be noted that Barack Obama was under no such pressure, since Democrats--reluctantly, angrily, to be sure--actually believe, as President Bush does, that there will be real pain on Main Street if some sort of bailout isn't achieved.

Happily, in the end, McCain did the responsible thing...but he did it foolishly, in a panicky fashion. He did support the emerging compromise. He took the Democrats' modifications--on oversight, homeowner and taxpayer protection, and restrictions on payouts to the executives who made these disastrous decisions--and made them his own. His support will help widen the majority of legislators who will support the bill.

What McCain didn't understand was that the legislative crisis was already receding when he made his melodramatic--and somewhat wild-eyed--suspension of campaign activities statement. (He didn't understand this because he has had no input into the process and, indeed, is neither respected for his financial expertise nor desired in the process because of his combative, peremptory negotiating style.)In any case, the crisis was receding because the Bush Administration was caving to the Democrats' modifications, as the President made clear in his speech last night. A Democratic Senator close to the negotiations told me after the speech, "We pretty much have a deal. The negotiations aren't over, but this is just too damn important to get snagged on a codicil."

Since it would have been fairly embarrassing to McCain for the crisis to end without his meaningless intervention, Bush laid on the White House summit and likely kumbaya session for this afternoon where the deal will probably be announced. And now, McCain faces a further embarrassment: what to do about his decision to pull out of the debate? It seems to me that if agreement is reached today, he has to debate tomorrow--and now, because of his "crisis" announcement, the debate will take place on turf less favorable to him: on economic as well as foreign policy. Even if an agreement isn't reached today, he will be hard pressed to explain why he isn't debating tomorrow. In any case, Obama's cool steadfastness has put him in the driver's seat on this one.

And that raises an interesting question: Why was McCain so quick to pull out of the debate? After all, with the momentum slightly in Obama's direction, he needed a game-changer--and foreign policy is, allegedly, his area of expertise. His peremptory actions yesterday was not the behavior of a confident man. It was the behavior of a man uncertain, despite all the macho bluster, about his chances in the most important theater of battle in any presidential campaign, one where gimmicks, diversions and untruths can be directly countered by his opponent. McCain may clean Obama's clock in the coming debates--but it seems entirely possible that the old fighter jock may be frightened that he's about to ditch another plane.

John Dickerson, a former colleague and reporting partner, has a great piece over at Slate on McCain's gambit.

On the restrictions--and opportunities--facing the next President.